


Cithaeron's Drums

by DaughterofProspero



Category: Bacchae - Euripides, Greek Tragedy, Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Attempted Seduction, Blood, Dreams and Nightmares, Homoeroticism, Prophetic Dreams, Religious Conflict, Sexual Tension, Violence, Wine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-02
Updated: 2016-12-02
Packaged: 2018-09-01 11:38:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8623129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaughterofProspero/pseuds/DaughterofProspero
Summary: When the strange priest arrives at the palace Pentheus is taken aback. Relief is short lived, soon replaced by dozens of other worries. Who is this lackadaisical man with honey-coloured hair? Sashaying across the thrown room, light as snowfall. Sharp violet eyes, half-lidded in perpetuity. Creamy skin flushed a seductive pink at the smooth cheeks, the plump wine-stained lips, the gently sloping collarbones…Thump THUMP thump THUMP thump THUMPClever.*Day and night the bakkhai dance. It's enough to drive a man insane.





	

_THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP_  
_THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP_

The distant pounding of drums and screaming women is enough to drive Pentheus to run a knife through his eardrums and have done with it. Day and night – especially night. Foreign tunes with lilting melodies that wriggle into his head and stay there for days afterwards. Roaring and cheering at all hours – who knows what barbarous deeds they celebrate.

 _THUMP THUMP thump THUMP THUMP_  
_thump THUMP THUMP_  
_thump THUMP THUMP_

When the hymns keep sleep away he lies in bed and stares past the moonlight ceiling. Imagining the dances, the rivers of wine, the flying hair…then shuts it out. His aunts. His mother. All helpless slaves to this bastard “God”.

 

 _Thump THUMP_  
_Thump THUMP_

When the strange priest arrives at the palace Pentheus is taken aback. Relief is short lived, soon replaced by dozens of other worries. Who is this lackadaisical man with honey-coloured hair? Sashaying across the thrown room, light as snowfall. Sharp violet eyes, half-lidded in perpetuity. Creamy skin flushed a seductive pink at the smooth cheeks, the plump wine-stained lips, the gently sloping collarbones…

_Thump THUMP thump THUMP thump THUMP_

Clever.

“Where are you from?”

“The Lydian mountains.”

“Why are you here?”

“To spread the teachings of God.”

“Who is this ‘God’?”

“He goes by many names.”

“So do they all.”

“Dionysus. Bacchos. Dithyrambos. The Loud One – “

“What do you want?”

“The God Who Cries out. The Wild One - ”

“Enough.”

“The bull-horned – “

“I said _enough_.”

A brief silence.

“The Even-Handed.” The stranger smiles cheekily.

“ _What do you want?_ ”

“As I said, to spread the teachings of God.”

“Do not lie to me, stranger.”

“I would never, _your highness_.” Pentheus bristles at the impudence.

“Your ‘ _God_ ’ does not exist. Your ‘ _God_ ’ is a con, a fantasy.”

“And what a marvellous fantasy he is.”

How prettily do riddles spill from that rubious mouth. On that perfumed breath. The scent tickles Pentheus’ nose, invades his throat; heady and cloying it warms, pooling in his belly. The priest smirks, slender fingers toying with a loose thread on his tunic.

_THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP_

“I would advise against provoking the Gods,” he says. Such cutting condescension.

In a moment the priest is forced to the floor and a blade is produced. Pentheus fills his left hand with as much of his victim’s hair as he can hold while bringing the knife in his right hand to the golden roots. Snarling, he slices and hacks, tresses melting gracefully to the floor. The priest does not struggle.

“That is what I think of your “God”.”

“Rest assured, Pentheus, he thinks even less of you.”

“You and your false idol have no power here.”

“If only you knew how little you know…”

“I could have you killed at a moment’s notice!”

“No idea who you are or what is to come…”

“I am Pentheus. Son of Agave – “

“A lunatic, running wild in the valleys of your mountain”

“Son of Echion – “

“Born from dirt, returned to dirt.”

“Protector of Thebes and _you will obey me!_ ”

“Only fools and the fearful follow the inept.”

Hardly has the final syllable left the priest’s mouth before Pentheus’ hand slams into it, splitting the delicate upper lip with a sharp smack. The priest’s head snaps to the side, but he does not fall to the ground. He breathes a strange exhalation that might be laugh, or might be a sigh.

Turning his head back towards the face of his aggressor, the priest stares him down with roiling eyes. A smile pushes a bead of blood out from his injured lip, glinting impossibly gold in a trick of the light. No sooner does it form than the priest’s quick tongue slithers out to catch it.

Sweat coats Pentheus’ furrowed brow. His palm still stings.

“About what do you have to smile, stranger?” He snarls.

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

Every muscle in his body yearns to assault the priest again. Keep his cheeks rosy with stinging palms, bruise his gentle collarbones the colour of the wine he loves so much, hear the satisfying yelp of breathy pain as he is thrown against a wall…

_Thump THUMP thump THUMP thump THUMP thump THUMP_

Pentheus resists.

“Lock him up,” he snaps to a guard. Obediently, the guard hauls the priest to his feet and begins to lead him to the dungeon. A second order halts him.

“In the stables.”

At this, the priest guffaws, his hearty bellow echoing in the throne room.

“Ah, Pentheus…man of pain…”

Pentheus says nothing.

“What a horrible name for a child.” The priest shakes his shorn head, then nudges the stupefied guard.

“Move. Him. Out.” Is all Pentheus can manage through gritted teeth.

“Apt…but horrible.”

 

Later Pentheus will recall little of their conversation. He will remember in vivid detail the feeling of the stranger’s silky locks between his fingers. The sound of the knife shearing away uneven swathes of honeyed hair. Ringlets tumbling to the ground, landing like little golden mouths open in ecstatic “o”s. How even with anger glinting in his piercing purple eyes, even after the indignity of his unceremonious haircut the priest still manages a coy smile, tossing his head, sending strays strands and more of his intoxicating smell billowing in Pentheus’ direction.

 _Thump thump thump thump_  
_Thump thump thump thump_

Tonight the King’s head is not filled with Bakkhic chants, but of the stranger’s lilting laugh and lingering voice. An itch on his arm draws Pentheus’ attention. When he reaches to scratch he sees a single strand of golden hair catching the moonlight, raising gooseflesh on his bare arm. For a moment, the room fills with the stranger’s cloying scent and warmth spreads through Pentheus again, a momentary fever.

Sleep comes at the cost of vibrant dreams, each scene a painfully detailed festival of violent ecstasy.

 

 _THUMP THUMP thump THUMP THUMP_  
_Thump THUMP THUMP_  
_Thump THUMP THUMP_

Acteon: His rugged face ripped open by his faithful hounds. Flesh dangling in shreds around gaps where his once handsome chin, his jaw, his cheek should be reveal a skeleton’s eternal grin. Defiant to the last, the hunter crumples. His body is a fountain, blood gushing upwards in a crimson geyser from his mangled corpse; soaking the ground and the maws of the feasting dogs. Pentheus feels every droplet prick his skin. Howls and laughter echo under the dome of the endless red sky. Acteon clots the air.

And then the howls morph into songs, fierce as before in celebration of the dead man. The dead man who’s remains birth serpents from it’s hollow frame; they slither from gaping cavities, coil around his ribs, tracing his veins with flicks of their indifferent tongues. Meanads whoop with delight, singing louder; some pounding their thyrsi against tree trunks and stones in frenzied percussion.

_ThumpTHUMPthumpTHUMPthumpTHUMPthumpTHUMP_

Blood still seeps from the corpse into the mountainside but the bakkhai dig into the reddest parts of the stained earth and wine bursts forth. The streams run together forming a brook, then a river, then a furious flood of wine that races down Cithaeron. No gates, no walls could stop this torrent, rushing ever closer to Thebes, threatening to drown the city.

 _Thumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthump_  
_thumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthump_

Pentheus sees it all. Perched above, on a rock? Atop a tree? Thebes seconds away from ruin, he tries to scream, to stop a force of nature with his voice alone. The maenads instantly go silent, locking their eyes on him. A booming voice fills the sky, louder than the rumble of the flood. The maenads advance, crazed, hungry. Pentheus feels his perch give out below him and he tumbles towards the waiting hands of the maenads below him as his city is engulfed and all the while the voice is laughing, laughing.

 _THUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMP_  
_THUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMP_

 

_THUMP_

 

Pentheus awakes with a sputtering gasp, heart beating in time to the unyielding rhythm of the Bakkhai and their God.

**Author's Note:**

> 34 works  
> 34 works published on this site and this is the first piece I've ever posted that is not Shakespeare.  
> Let's hear it for number 35: C-C-COMBO BREAKER  
> Anyway: BLOOD AND GODS AND FATE AND STUFF.  
> Such a cool fucking play. Brutal. I got to be in a production that was all a capella and drumming on water jugs and cartons and wine bottles and fluids everywhere and it was NUTS, I TELL YOU, GODDAMN BANANAS IT WAS. But that constant percussion...man...it'll get to you.  
> Sorry, rambling.  
> This started as a descriptive exercise and morphed into a slightly plot-driven descriptive exercise. The dream was fun. Dionysus was fun. Foreshadowing is fun. This was fun. Been mulling it over for a while, feels good to put something out.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
